Maximizing Website Return on Investment: The Crucial Role of High-Quality Search

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1 Maximizing Website Return on Investment: The Crucial Role of High-Quality Search

2 Driving conversions: the crucial role of search Rapid payback on investments The other side of the balance sheet: reducing customer service costs Hosted and on-premise options Conclusion

3 Websites are among the most measurable marketing investments that a business or institution can make. They enable organizations to set quantifiable objectives that tie directly to overall marketing and communication goals. They also allow granular tracking of results to help ensure that marketing investments provide a timely, tangible return on investment (ROI). To maximize website ROI, Google advocates a proven, methodical approach involving four steps: 1. Drive traffic through activities such as search-based advertising and website promotions. 2. Analyze traffic to understand where visitors come from and how they interact with the site. 3. Optimize the site by determining which combinations of site content and design drive the most conversions. 4. Increase conversions and decrease bounce rates using the intelligence gathered during the steps above. Next, using search such as on-premise search from the Google Search Appliance (GSA) or hosted search with Google Site Search guide your visitors to find the information they need to become active customers or otherwise engage with your website. The Google Approach Google Adwords Google Analytics!"##$$%&'()*($&!"#$%"&'()&*+##"** +'"&($$%&,-*.&,'&."##$$%/!"##$..&01%$&.*02)$3,,,-#(.%/012-#(. 1. Drive 4. Convert Google Website Search ROI 2. Analyze 3. Optimize Google Website Optimizer This iterative process can be used to continually increase revenue and site ROI, creating strategic advantage and adding value to the site to users, and to the bottom line. This continual improvement, which lets website owners understand and manage the productivity of data on their sites, is at the core of Google s product and service offerings. Google provides a complete family of solutions to support this productivity, including: Google AdWords the search-based advertising solution used by thousands of businesses worldwide to gain new customers in a cost-effective way Google Analytics Google s web analytics services, enabling advertisers and publishers to make marketing campaigns and websites more effective 3

4 Search is Often Overlooked as a Factor in Driving Conversions Despite solid evidence that Internet search is key to driving conversions, most sites offer visitors sub-par search experiences. Studies suggest that 85% of site searches do not return relevant information to visitors. 4 About 22% of site searches return no results whatsoever, 5 and 80% of visitors abandon sites if search functionality is poor. 6 Google Website Optimizer Google s free website testing and optimization tool Google Site Search and Google Search Appliance solutions for extending Google s award-winning search technology to websites of all kinds Driving conversions: the crucial role of search Step four, driving conversions, can be among the most challenging objectives to achieve. Why? Because, according to Marketing Sherpa s Landing Page Handbook: Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website. Whether they are looking for general information or a specific product, visitors that do not find what they need within seconds are likely to abandon a site. Studies show that website search is a pivotal factor in determining whether or not visitors will spend more time on a website and eventually take the desired action. When site navigation attempts fail, 50% of users turn to search. 1 In a study of 2,000 shoppers, 71% used keyword searches to find products. 2 And when customers make online purchases, 90% of them report using site search to access self-service content. 3 On the other hand, companies that have implemented high-quality website search report an increase in visitor engagement, including substantially increased conversions and sales, as well as reduced customer service costs. It s easy to imagine scenarios where search might transform results. For instance, Trueways Survival School, offering survival training and Bushcraft courses, uses online search to help visitors pinpoint relevant products and speed on-site customer education. Waterfilters.net, which offers a huge inventory of water filtration supplies, has used search to reduce its bounce rate by 4% while boosting conversions by 11%. Business software solutions provider EMC Insignia increased e-commerce sales 20% since implementing high-quality website search, while at the same time decreasing customer-requested refunds by 85%. Rapid payback on investments In terms of ROI, high-quality site search pays off quickly. Google search customers report increases in online conversions and sales of up to 20%, sometimes within days of bringing search to their sites. However, the returns are impressive even if the growth is lower. A conversion or sales increase of even 5% is often enough to dramatically impact the bottom line for a business of any size. What s more, as satisfaction levels increase, due to increased relevancy, it s likely that customers will more readily return to a site, and recommend it to others. Google Website Search: Increase conversions and sales Assumptions accurately delivering visitors relevant information 1 Jupiter Media Matrix 2 etailing Group 3 Harris Interactive 4 Jupiter Research 5 IDC 6 Jupiter Media Matrix sales by as much as 20% 4

5 Google Site Search helps our customers access data quickly, get answers to common support questions, and find key product features. This not only helps customers; it helps our support staff worldwide as well. Our support staff can quickly find links, documentation, and common answers which help customers in the case of on-the-fly inbound calls. Layla Rudy Webmaster EMC Insignia ROI Calculations The other side of the balance sheet: reducing customer service costs At the same time as companies are increasing revenues, they are also reducing costs with high-quality search solutions. Using website search, customers can serve themselves and find answers to their questions online, instead of having to send s or call in to a service center. Even a small decrease in phone and support incidents due to intuitive, powerful website search can decrease customer service costs substantially. Website Search ROI: Reduce Customer Service Costs Facts Small Business Mid-Size Business Large Business Employees 50 1,000 50,000 Revenues % of Revenues from Website 40% 20% 10% Website generated Revenue % increase in web conversions 5% 5% 5% % increase in web generated revenue 5% 5% 5% 7 8 Assumptions contact centers by up to 30%, but assume only 5% reduction averages) 1 ROI Calculations = 360,000 Total Incidents Phone (62%) (38%)!! = = $167,000 in annual savings $68,000 in annual savings Releases-2003-Practices-Survey.asp 8 HDI Although results may vary depending on business size and the complexity of support needs, even a 5% reduction in phone and support incidents can save many thousands of dollars in customer support costs annually. Many other companies are seeing reduced costs via enhanced customer service 5

6 Google Site Search has been terrific, we would not have expected changing something as simple as search would have such a positive impact on use of the site. Peter Walker Chief Technology Officer Mortgages.co.uk At Mortgages.co.uk, a leading provider of information about high-quality, hosted site search resulted in an increase in page views of 8% and a boost in visitor conversions of 16%. a 30% reduction in inbound support s within the first week of implementing search on its Internet site. EMC Insignia used in-house search to enable customer support representatives to quickly find answers to common customer questions posed during inbound calls. On Toolhawker.com, which adresses the needs of professional technicians, average customer pages per visit increased 25% after the company implemented high-quality search, translating to more meaningful time spent on the site. Hosted and on-premise options Several options should be considered when selecting a high-quality search solution. Hosted solutions, including Google Site Search, provide Software as a Service (SaaS) search, an alternative that is cost-effective because there is no need to deploy hardware and software locally, and because set-up takes only minutes. In addition, hosted solutions are housed in globally-distributed data centers, optimizing the efficiency of data management and energy consumption both of which translate to lower costs. Hosted solutions can be customized to any organization s branding requirements and easily linked to existing websites. On-demand indexing allows organizations to get pages indexed quickly, further lowering the barriers to entry. This option is ideal for organizations with limited IT resources, or who don t want to increase the levels of hardware that they install and maintain in-house, but that still want to enable users to search a website using powerful Google search engine technologies. Depending on specific search needs, organizations can also elect to use a plug-andplay search appliance the Google Search Appliance that is deployed on premise, yet minimizes burden on IT staff. On-site search solutions are a cost-effective option if they include hardware, software, product updates, support, and product replacement coverage as part of the package for one price. This one price model eliminates expensive annual maintenance fees and removes the threat of cost over-runs. Although the solution is deployed on-premise, Google customers report that the appliance is fast to deploy, offers automatic indexing, and requires very little maintenance. On average, only one-fifth of a full-time employee s time is required to maintain an appliance in an organization with 55,000 employees, according to reports from Google customers. With a high level of security, flat pricing, and advanced APIs for integration with multiple systems in an enterprise environment, the on-premise alternative is well suited to organizations that want to enable website visitors to search a relatively large number of pages or search data contained in multiple back-end repositories or product databases. Google offers a full line of solutions for website search that meet the requirements and budgets of virtually any organization: solution. It enables users to customize the look and feel of their website to meet branding requirements. great price. An integrated hardware and software solution, the Mini offers plug-and-play installation and can be purchased online. 6

7 The Google Search Appliance is easier to set up than your home PC. Patrick Gardella IT Department Discovery Communications universal search: the ability to search all content through one search box, including content within web servers, intranets, file shares, databases, content management systems, and business applications. Website Search Options Google Site Search Google Mini Google Search Appliance Google search quality X X X Customization features X X X Crawling and Indexing Control X X X Secured Search X X Support Online Online and Phone More Information While it may seem obvious, the most important consideration in selecting a website search solution, whether hosted or on-premise, is whether or not it will return relevant results quickly. If website visitors cannot find what they need within eight seconds or less, then they are far less likely to become prospects or customers. If they do get accurate, relevant results like those consistently, quickly delivered by any of Google s search solutions they are more likely to engage, purchase, and be satisfied with their web experience. Conclusion At a time when customers are conscious of new expenditures, organizations are looking to deploy solutions that provide substantive and fast ROI. Google search solutions provide organizations with a simple way to increase revenues generated from a website and decrease customer support costs, providing solid benefits to the bottom line. Whether the goal is to increase leads and sales, decrease customer service costs, or both, high-quality website search can transform an organization s website into a powerful tool that yields substantial, lasting, and highly measurable returns. Copyright Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. WP